Looking back at the 90s is generally done through rose-tinted, blurry glasses; you only remember the great gigs, the great meals, and, of course, the great clubs, writes Anthony Remedy.
The atmosphere-less club and the Nightlink trek home on a rainy Thursday in January isn't something you tell kids about twenty years later...
Saying that, all the nights were kinda important at the time, to you or to someone. A person could have met the love of their life on a half-empty dance floor, or the love of their evening for maybe 24 hours. The music was always important, now and then. Whether it was house, techno, drum and bass, or whatever, the music and the nightlife meant the world to many of us.
Clearly, nearly all these memories of dark clubs, the queues in, packed (or empty) dance floors, DJs from home or abroad mixing perfectly on the most basic of setups. It's hard not to think of these times as the best of times: the mid-90s to the 2000s. When clubs were very high in the social conversation, it was all new and exciting.
Back then, no one I knew ever brought a camera out. We thought those nights would last forever. Luckily, photographer Brendan Duffy was hired by promoters across the country to capture DJs, dancers, and the club party scene. He shot everything on film, mostly for magazines like Mixmag or Clubbing.com, but sometimes just for fun. Now, 25 years later, Brendan's Instagram account, Only Camera In The Room, is getting a lot of attention. He shares photos from clubs all over the country - straight and gay, trendy and mainstream, DJs and dancers. He has more than 15,000 images from 1997 to 2022.
Clearly, he was out a lot.
"It was new and exciting, in terms of music photography at that time. The clubs were places where you made pictures instead of taking them. Every night was an adventure, with the feeling that you could have taken the best photograph of your life," says Duffy.
I've followed the page since it started, and it’s clear these photos capture a time of big social change in Ireland. Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1993, and Brendan’s photos from places like Powderbubble - run by Panti Bliss and Niall Sweeney - show a party scene and a country ready to take off.
Many of his images show how electronic music grew as a business, from future superstar DJs playing small venues with records stacked on beer crates, to headlining huge festivals like Homelands and Creamfields. It's also pretty funny to see sons and daughters spot their parents partying in old club photos.
"It's a window in Irish nightlife. For instance, the likes of Ministry of Sound doing a night in Carrickmacross, to the MTV aftershow party at the Temple Theatre, these days will never be repeated," says Duffy.
If you want to dive deeper into Brendan's work and enjoy a party too, check out the Only Camera In The Room event with No Filler at Hen's Teeth, Dublin on July 24th - tickets are available now.
Enjoy more clubbing pictures from Only Camera In The Room here
